The scoff in my throat just kind of came out. "Do you remember telling your friend on the phone that you didn't need a fucking idiot working for you? Or do you remember telling me that if I couldn't handle the job, I wasn't needed?" There was probably just a little too much edge to my voice.
"Ritz," he groaned. Groaned! Like he was embarrassed or something when the words had come directly out of his mouth.
I tightened up my shoulders and flattened my mouth to give him an incredulous look. It didn't really work because he just managed to look at my mouth curiously. "Well.It came out of your mouth, didn’t it?"
The question had barely left my mouth before I physically flinched at the aggression in my voice. I’d told myself over and over again to stop, to move over, and I would. There were millions of things that were unforgivable and being a grumpy shit wasn’t one of them. Even if I wanted to believe it was. I had to pry half the words out of my mouth to feed them to him. “I’m sorry. I forgive you. I’ll figure out how to drop it sooner than later.”
Dex scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed, frowning just slightly down at me. "Iwouldn’t have said that shit if I hadn’t been pissed off before," he huffed.“If you’re hopin’ to make me beg you to forget about it, you’re gonna be holdin’ your breath a while, baby.”
Was it mean of me tosnort? Yes. But I did it anyway without even thinking about it.Him? Beg? I’d be sending parkas to hell the day that happened.
I could forgive him but forget? Eh. Not so much, at least not so quickly.
When I looked over at him, the side of his mouth was tilted up in a half-smile. The tip of his elbow nudged my side again. "I'm not gonna fire you, all right?"
That didn't mean I wasn't planning on finding another job so that I wouldn't deal with his dick-ass but whatever. So I just tipped my chin down. "Okay."
"Yeah?" he asked slowly.
I nodded. "Yeah."
He didn't look completely convinced with my answer. "You're hangin' in there, babe." He paused. "Even when I gotta fix the shit you mess up sometimes. I'm not complainin' anymore."
Anymore. I snorted. Whether he was just being nice because my brother, Trip,orLuther had said something to him, I wasn't going to ask.
As long as he wasn't still being a dick, I'd take it.
"Have you heard from Blake today?" I asked him, trying to get away from all this talk about me getting fired.
Dex plucked a box of organic granola bars from the shelf and dropped it into the cart. "Yeah. Sean's got meningitis. He's stillinthe hospital."
A little kid in the hospital? My stomach churned."God, that sucks."
He nodded, his eyes on another shelf. "Yeah. We need to stop by Sonny's and pick up your shit," he announced, glancing at my what-the-hell look out of the corner of his eye. "You're comin' with us."
Chapter Twelve
“One of you please explain to me why we’re leaving tonight and not tomorrow morning,” I yawned, hoping my question made sense.
It was two-thirty in the morning and Houston was still two hours away. Dex was behind the wheel of a big, black GMC truck I’d never seen before—he always came to work on the back of his Dyna. Slim, on the other hand, was sitting shotgun and fiddling with the radio station.Again.
For the tenth time in less than twenty minutes to be exact. It’d be the last time if I had anything to say about it.
“We have to be there by eleven to set up the booth,” Dex explained, looking at me through the rearview mirror. “I don’t wanna risk not wakin' up on time tomorrow mornin’.”
Ugh. I guess he had a point. I also guess I shouldn’t be complaining since I wasn’t the one actually driving. Regardless, I wouldhave rather gotten a few hours of sleep in my bed—by that I meant Sonny’s guest room that I’d made my own pad over the last few weeks.
“Go to sleep, Iris,” Slim chimed in. “At least one of us can get a decent rest.”
I thought about telling him he could go to sleep because there was no way I would be able to. Even as a kid, it'd always been hard for me to sleep in a car. I think I was just paranoid that something would happen along the drive and if I'd stayed up, I couldhave prevented it. It sounded crazy but it made perfect sense in my head.
“You can go to sleep. I can survive on a few hours,” I told our resident redhead.
No joke, he looked at Dex for approval, nodded and promptly passed out with his forehead against the glass windowwithin a three minute time frame.
“Well,” I muttered, looking at him to make sure he was asleep. He was. I had a feeling this was going to be a fun trip.
Or not.
